[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 69 (Thursday, May 7, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2727-S2728]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN

  Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, we have reached a tipping point in 
President Obama's quest for a ``legacy''. Ukraine is on fire; Senior 
Chinese generals openly boast of their desire to settle millennial 
scores with their neighbors; Al Qaeda is stronger than ever; ISIS is 
massacring Christians with a genocidal savagery the likes of which we 
have not seen since World War II; and Israel feels abandoned. American 
foreign policy is rudderless, bringing to mind Lewis Carroll's comment 
from Alice Through the Looking Glass, ``If you don't know where you are 
going any road can take you there.''

[[Page S2728]]

  Now the President has staked his name on reaching a deal with the 
Ayatollahs no matter how dangerous or destabilizing the final accord 
is. If the Iranians agree to this, and from their own hegemonic 
interest they would be foolish not to, the Israeli hand will be forced 
as it was with the Iraqi Osirik reactor in 1981; or at the least, a 
Middle East nuclear arms race, that pulls in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, 
Egypt and the Gulf States, will begin.
  Mr. Obama has turned his back on decades of assurances from 
Presidents of both parties that Iran would not acquire nuclear weapons. 
He has willfully ignored 40 years of hostility from Tehran. If the 
President does not recognize that we are at war, the mullahs certainly 
do. They are the chief sponsor of global terror. They have never 
stepped back from their desire to obliterate Israel and to destroy the 
United States. Our Arab friends see Iran creating a satellite ``Shia 
Crescent'' stretching to the Mediterranean and consisting of Iraq, 
Syria, and Lebanon. To their south and west, they see Iran gaining 
control of Yemen. Shia Iran is so obsessed with its race to dominate 
the Middle East that it is funneling millions of dollars to the Sunni 
terrorist group Hamas, to fund their war against Israel, even though 
the Sunnis are religious enemies.
  Tehran has a 9-figure line item in its budget to support terrorism, 
sending hundreds of millions of dollars to various groups each year; 
the payments to Hezbollah alone are as much as $200 million annually. 
According to Canadian intelligence, ``[I]n February 1999, it was 
reported that Palestinian police discovered documents that attest to 
the transfer of $35 million to Hamas from the Iranian Intelligence 
Service (MOIS), money reportedly meant to finance terrorist activities 
against Israeli targets.'' Illustrating how such support is part of 
official government policy, from 2001 to 2006, Iran transferred $50 
million to Hezbollah fronts in Lebanon by sending funds from its 
central bank through Bank Saderat's London office.
  Mr. President, 40 years ago, Richard Nixon confronted Soviet 
incursions into the Middle East. The so called Nixon Doctrine laid the 
foundation for a peaceful pro-Western resolution of the various crises 
in the region. Nixon made it clear to everyone that the United States 
would not abandon Israel. Israel would be backed by the power of the 
United States in any conflict with its Soviet backed Arab neighbors and 
against the Soviet Union itself. One by one, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi 
Arabia, and the Emirates, recognized the futility of armed hostility to 
Israel and backed away from Moscow and made peace, an imperfect peace 
but peace nonetheless. Golda Meir called President Nixon ``the best 
friend Israel ever had.''
  In the region's west, Nixon promoted a secular pro-Western Iran, 
albeit under the imperfect leadership of the Shah. Nevertheless, the 
Shah bottled the Soviet Navy from entering the Persian Gulf and Iran's 
economy took off--until Jimmy Carter decided to aid the transfer of the 
Ayatollah Khomeini from his Paris exile back to Iran--in the name of 
human rights. We have reaped the whirlwind.
  Now we have the Obama Doctrine. America is the problem. Israel is 
viewed as an obstacle to peace and Iran is treated as another oppressed 
constituency with legitimate grievances against the West, so much so 
that when millions of Iranians took to the streets against the mullahs, 
President Obama did nothing and said nothing--strengthening the hand of 
the clerics. When the Egyptian generals overthrew the Muslim 
Brotherhood, who were waging war against Coptic Christians and openly 
spoke of renewing the fight against Israel--the State Department 
condemned them as ``undemocratic.'' The old American alliances are 
collapsing in confusion and fear and the only answer from the 
administration seems to be to clear Iran's path toward a nuclear 
weapon.
  The greatest concession in the current negotiations has been the 
abandonment of the original U.S. position of preventing Iran from 
having a nuclear-weapons capability. This was the stance of the Bush 
administration. It was also the position of the Obama administration 
until November 2013. This is a disaster. Here is what we know as 
acknowledged by the Obama administration negotiators including the 
Secretaries of State and Energy:
  There will be no limits on Iran's ballistic-missile force, the means 
for delivering its nuclear weapons. The U.S. position of seeking limits 
on the missile force was abandoned when the Supreme Leader objected and 
Obama conceded.
  There will be no resolution of Iran's weaponization activities. Iran 
will promise once again to cooperate with the IAEA, but no one expects 
anything other than more Iranian obstacles. A resolution of 
weaponization activities was also a precondition for an agreement.
  Inspections will be based on managed access but only on Iran's terms. 
At one point, the U.S. insisted that effective verification required 
full access to facilities and people. Under the Obama plan there will 
be no inspections of military sites much less suspected covert 
facilities such as the Lavizan-3 site or the Fordow weapons complex 
buried deep in the Iranian mountains.
  Obama will allow the Arak heavy-water reactor to be modified but not 
in any way that prevents Iran from using it to produce plutonium for 
weapons. Again, the initial Obama position was that the reactor must be 
dismantled.
  The economic sanctions, particularly the banking freeze that wrecked 
the Iranian economy will be lifted. In fact, Tehran has already 
received billions of dollars just for continuing the negotiations. It 
has already freed the Russians to sell the advanced S-300 air defense 
system. As agitation against the mullahs was growing we have given them 
a lifeline. Squeezing Iran economically, aided by the fall in worldwide 
oil prices, was the surest way to force concessions. Once the sanctions 
are lifted it will be nearly impossible to go back.
  The restrictions on Iran's nuclear program will reportedly be phased 
out after 10 years, a period shorter than the time it has taken to 
negotiate the agreement. The original U.S. position was that 
restrictions would be permanent. As Henry Kissinger said, far from 
enabling the President's goal of disengaging from the Middle East, the 
framework will necessitate a deepening involvement in the region under 
a complex ``new order'' dictated by a nuclear Iran.
  Iran will be allowed to operate thousands of centrifuges to enrich 
uranium and to pursue research and development of more advanced 
systems. The original U.S. position--backed by multiple U.N. Security 
Council resolutions demanding complete suspension of all enrichment 
activities--was zero enrichment and zero centrifuges. Under President 
Obama, zero was abandoned as unrealistic, and the number of permitted 
centrifuges moved up, according to the Secretary of Energy from 1,000 
to 4,000 to 6,000. Iran has rejected each offer as insufficient, only 
to be rewarded with a better one. That is how the administration 
negotiates--from behind.
  In his 1987 State of the Union Address, Ronald Regan warned us:

       Our approach is not to seek agreement for agreement's sake 
     but to settle only for agreements that truly enhance our 
     national security and that of our allies. We will never put 
     our security at risk or that of our allies just to reach an 
     agreement . . . No agreement is better than a bad agreement.

  There you have it. Our allies--Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, 
Jordan, and Egypt--are worried. Tehran is on the march and moving 
closer to nuclear status. As Charles Krauthammer noted, ``the one great 
hope for Middle East peace, the strategic anchor for forty years'', is 
giving the green light to both. That is not a legacy of which to be 
proud.

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